By Harut Sassounian
For seven years, the West has thoroughly indulged Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, allowing him to get away with all sorts of anti-democratic measures without a single complaint from the so-called Free World.
Pashinyan claims that the West supports his government because he has brought democracy to Armenia, even though he has established a one-man rule, bordering on a totalitarian regime.
Western countries express their uncritical support for Pashinyan not because he has done wonderful things for Armenia, but because he serves their interests. The whole world, including Azerbaijan and Turkey, is overjoyed that Pashinyan is conceding everything, making it possible for them to impose their will on Armenia.
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Last week, Tucker Carlson, an American conservative political commentator, exposed Pashinyan’s fake democratic façade to millions of Americans. Carlson, a prominent former Fox News journalist, now hosts the Tucker Carlson Show, which has five million viewers on YouTube and three million on Facebook.
During an 80-minute interview, Carlson spoke with Narek Karapetyan, the nephew of industrialist Samvel Karapetyan, who is imprisoned by Pashinyan for defending the Armenian Apostolic Church, and his attorney, Bob Amsterdam. Pashinyan’s supporters tried to denigrate the interview by falsely claiming that Karapetyan paid Carlson $400,000.
Within 48 hours of its airing, the interview was viewed on X (Twitter) by 3 million people with 15,000 likes, 5,000 reposts, and 2,500 comments. On YouTube, 330,000 people watched the interview, which so far has garnered 15,000 likes and 4,000 comments. On Facebook, it got 75,000 views, 1,800 likes, and 400 comments. Thousands more viewed it on shared Facebook pages and Instagram accounts.
The conversation began by discussing the facts of the Armenian Genocide. Carlson described the murdered Armenians as ‘Christian martyrs.’
Turning to Pashinyan’s role in Armenia, Carlson said: “You have a prime minister of Armenia who seems to be intent on destroying traditional Christianity or the Church.” Narek Karapetyan replied: “Our prime minister, six months ago, started to attack the Armenian Church and the head of the Armenian Church. He wants to dethrone him. He imprisoned three archbishops.”
Narek explained that philanthropist Samvel Karapetyan was arrested at Pashinyan’s orders after he told journalists: “A small group of people forgetting Armenian history, forgetting history of our Church is attacking the Armenian Church and the Armenian people. If the politicians will not handle the situation, we will take part in handling it ourselves, our way.” Pashinyan also ordered the confiscation of Karapetyan’s company valued at over half a billion dollars․
Carlson stated: “This prime minister, who is clearly authoritarian by definition, is against the Church. So the idea is to break the back of Orthodox Christianity, of traditional Christianity in Armenia, and to use the police to do it.”
Narek replied: Pashinyan is doing these things because he “gets some information from Turkey and Azerbaijan that you must change the narrative of the Church, to forget the genocide and to have a new head of the Church to go to a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan.”
Carlson then interviewed Samvel Karapetyan’s attorney, Bob Amsterdam, who said: “In Armenia, there is going to be [on Nov. 14-15] a prayer breakfast…while my client, Samvel Karapetyan, is in jail. Archbishops have been jailed, clerics have been jailed. The leader of the country is trying to split the Church by going to services of a defrocked priest, a man who has said he is going to remove the leader of the Church. This man is being feted by American Christians in Yerevan, Armenia. A man who calls clerics prostitutes, a man who uses language that, at my advanced age, I’ve never heard a leader use against leaders of the Church. And yet, shockingly, this prayer breakfast is going to go on. And I call it a reputation-laundering breakfast. The US Government allows this to go on.”
Amsterdam added regarding the prayer breakfast: “I believe one of the Trump children is going to Armenia. I’m sure Donald Trump Jr. again has no idea of what’s actually going on there. It’s a terrible situation where, because you can’t get into the media to tell them the truth, so many senior people in the United States operate on ignorance and reputation-launder people like Pashinyan…. In Armenia they’ve just arrested not only bishops, but now they’ve arrested three mayors who spoke out and who weren’t helpful, as well as the family of the Patriarch, the Catholicos — the brother and some other relative — again, on completely trumped-up charges.”
Amsterdam then complained that Pashinyan is being pressured into signing a peace treaty with Azerbaijan “at a tremendous cost to the people of Armenia. There are tremendous cultural and church relics that are being lost and defiled. There are 120,000 [Artsakhtsis] who have been cleansed from Azerbaijan and no thought has been given to this. We have 23 Christian [Armenian] hostages in Baku, and the prime minister of Armenia did not even speak of them when he was with President Trump. President Trump raised the issue. It is shocking how Armenia has a prime minister who seems to resent his own history as an Armenian. They’ve taken Mount Ararat off [passport] stamps. They don’t talk about the genocide. They attack the Church. The leader of the country wants to remove and appoint the Catholicos. Well, of course, he doesn’t understand what an apostolic Church is. To be an apostolic Church…you have to have a connection to the first apostles, which means your election must be sanctified by bishops, by leaders of the Church, not a political figure. He is shockingly ignorant of his own religion.”
Carlson responded: “It sounds like it’s not his religion. I mean, it sounds like he’s not a believer.”
Amsterdam added: “Samvel Karapetyan is an absolutely, unbelievably principled Christian who is now sitting in his fifth month in jail, innocent of everything other than praising God. And that’s why he’s in jail.”
Amsterdam then criticized the United States government and the European Union for supporting Pashinyan: “Our government has decided, as has the EU frankly, that they are going to go with the SOB [Pashinyan] they know.”
At the end of the interview, Amsterdam urged the public to read the 61-page White Paper titled “Nikol Pashinyan and the Persecution of Samvel Karapetyan and the Armenian Apostolic Holy Church,” available online at “freekarapetyan.com.”